Good, the

For centuries, the battle of morality was fought between those who claimed that
your life belongs to God and those who claimed that it belongs to your
neighbors—between those who preached that the good is self-sacrifice for the
sake of ghosts in heaven and those who preached that the good is self-sacrifice
for the sake of incompetents on earth. And no one came to say that your life
belongs to you and that the good is to live it.

There are, in essence, three schools of thought on the nature of the good: the
intrinsic, the subjective, and the objective. The intrinsic theory holds that
the good is inherent in certain things or actions as such, regardless of their
context and consequences, regardless of any benefit or injury they may cause to
the actors and subjects involved. It is a theory that divorces the concept of
“good” from beneficiaries, and the concept of “value” from valuer and
purpose—claiming that the good is good in, by, and of itself.

The subjectivist theory holds that the good bears no relation to the facts of
reality, that it is the product of a man’s consciousness, created by his
feelings, desires, “intuitions,” or whims, and that it is merely an “arbitrary
postulate” or an “emotional commitment.”

The intrinsic theory holds that the good resides in some sort of reality,
independent of man’s consciousness; the subjectivist theory holds that the good
resides in man’s consciousness, independent of reality.

The objective theory holds that the good is neither an attribute of “things
in themselves” nor of man’s emotional states, but an evaluation of the facts
of reality by man’s consciousness according to a rational standard of value.
(Rational, in this context, means: derived from the facts of reality and
validated by a process of reason.) The objective theory holds that the good is
an aspect of reality in relation to man—and that it must be discovered, not
invented, by man. Fundamental to an objective theory of values is the question:
Of value to whom and for what? An objective theory does not permit
context-dropping or “concept-stealing”; it does not permit the separation of
“value” from “purpose,” of the good from beneficiaries, and of man’s actions
from reason.